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Can Theology Go Through Kant?
After being reintroduced to Immanuel Kant’s thought after our last session on MacCulloch’s book, his philosophy intrigues me and I see the inherent and serious challenges Kant poses in reference to theistic epistemology.
A good introduction to Kant’s philosophy of religion can be read here on the Stanford Encycopedia of Philosophy website. (A supplemental entry on Kant’s influence on religion can be found here.)
After writing my last church history essay on Kant, that prompted me to delve deeper into Kant’s philosophy and his thoughts about God, religious epistemology and morality. One book I got in specific reference to Kant’s subsequent impact on theology is Kant and Theology at the Boundaries of Reason by Chris L. Firestone.
Chapter 21: Enlightenment: Ally or Enemy? (1492 – 1815) – Part II (1650 – 1750)
For our next meeting on Tuesday, August 26, please read the next three sections of Chapter 21: Social Watersheds in the Netherlands and England (1650 – 1750), Gender Roles in the Enlightenment, and Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century.
UPDATE – Chapter 21: Enlightenment: Ally or Enemy? (1492 – 1815) – Part I (1492 – 1700)
Benoît Louis Prévost, An engraving from the 1772 edition of the “Encyclopédie”. Truth, in the top center, is surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to the right, Philosophy and Reason.
Today we delve into the first part of a series of studies on the Age of Enlightenment and its effects on Christianity.
Here, we delve into challenges to the authority of the Church and the Bible, the philosophy of Baruch de Spinoza, and the aftermath that the 1492 Expulsion of the Jews in Spain and Portugal had in fostering religious skepticism and doubt.
What is God Like? Does God Change? Is Everything Predetermined/Predestined by God? Has God Settled the Future? – Greg Boyd
Does God change?
Does God know the future?
In most churches today, if you would answer in the affirmative to the first question and negative to the second, you’d likely be branded a heretic or “liberal”. Many people seem to be so set in his or her ways that they won’t even carefully consider a different opinion or viewpoint about God or other theological matters. But it makes sense – for many, his or her view of God that they’ve grown up with or have adopted over the years, they’ve formed a close, emotional (not just psychological or spiritual) bond to it that’s hard to let go.
The very notion of entertaining the thought of God NOT knowing the future or that he can experience new things, or that he is NOT in absolute, complete control of everything (his omniscience, omnipotence, etc.) can be quite (emotionally) unsettling to even consider. (As a criticism of open theism, it may seem to anthropomorphize God a bit too much.)
Much of theology these days (and same goes to a vast majority of the view of God that is communicated through pulpits every week on any given Sunday) seem to be stuck in medieval or Reformation times, and seem to be unwilling to budge. As you know, much of history, science, technology, etc. has changed and progressed since that time, and the Church has had a hard time (or a very stubborn reluctance in) catching up to the rapid changes that are happening in our modern world, so it faces a crisis of remaining relevant to future generations if the Church continues on this trend I believe.
Perhaps our theology and understanding of God need to be updated.
Interesting viewpoints on God’s nature and action according to open theism.
From the website:
Does God know all future events? Only if the future is in some real sense already determined. God, to be God, must know every true proposition, including all about the future. But if the future is truly ‘open’, not even God could know the future because there are no true facts about the future to know. Why is this disturbing?
Has God Settled the Future? – Greg Boyd
Gregory A. Boyd’s profile and an interesting series on God and theology below his profile.
“Imagining Barth and Nietzsche in Conversation” by Daniel Migliore and the Third Ed. of “Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), German philosopher
Karl Barth (1886 – 1968), German theologian
Just as Project Augustine celebrates its two-year anniversary this month, Eerdmans Publishing will have the 3rd Edition of Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology out next month.
Project Augustine started off with going through all of the 2nd Edition of Daniel Migliore’s Faith Seeking Understanding which you will find here in July of 2012.
According to his article, Mr. Migliore will include a brand new section of an imaginary conversation between German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and German theologian Karl Barth.
From the article:
In my dialogue I try to avoid giving all the good lines to one of the speakers and reducing the other to a mere foil. My reason for doing so is that Nietzsche’s critique, even if dated, is in some respects devastating, and if I understand Barth’s way of doing theology aright, his response to the atheist challenge is not to try to defeat it by a clever apologetic strategy but instead simply to present as clearly as he can the Christian understanding of God centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture.
Our group took great joy going over Prof. Migliore’s book and we look forward to the new edition coming out next month.
Daniel L. Migliore is Charles Hodge Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary
Does God Change in Response to Suffering? Motlmann, von Speyr, the Cross, and the Suffering of God, the Trinity
Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony, Isenheim, Germany, c. 1510-15, oil on wood
Undoubtedly, suffering and death changes us in some degree or another. It’s a given in life. A death of a close friend, parent, or loved one can profoundly affect the outlook of one’s life.
I can only imagine the unimaginable pain a parent has to go through if their child dies. It would undoubtedly change the parent’s life.
Is it the same for God then? Did God change when he experienced Jesus’ death? Does God himself change in response to suffering, pain, and death?
Plato and Theology
In order to really get a good understanding of Christian theology and Christian philosophy, you first need a solid foundation of understanding Plato’s philosophy.
There’s just no way around it. Even Paul’s writings contain Platonic thought and ideas.
Plato’s philosophy still heavily influences Christianity today as well – for instance, our ideas about body/soul dualism, the afterlife, the spiritual being greater than the flesh/material, repentance, conversion, etc.
Here are some summaries we wrote about Plato’s and Greek philosophy’s impact on Christian thought here in terms of church history.
Here is Prof. Andrew Davison of St. Johns College, Nottingham, UK, talking about how Plato influenced Christian philosophy – especially that of Augustine, who was heavily influenced by Plotinus and Neoplatonism.
Does God Play Dice with the Universe? The Role of Chance and Providence in Theology and Science
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
– Albert Einstein
“Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”
– Niels Bohr, in reply to Einstein
In Gerald L. Schroeder’s book, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, he describes the blind forces of nature that lie behind much of human grief:
“An earthquake shakes a bridge from its foundation, dropping it onto a crowded bus passing beneath. A chance cosmic ray smashes into an ovum, produces a free radical which in its natural drive to establish electrical balance tears and mutates a chromosome. As a result, a crippled child is born. The same Creator that produces the beauty of a sunrise and the colors of a flower must be credited with these horrors as well.” (p. 168)
Last year, while I was attending classes at a city college, I would always pass by a cerebral palsy center. From time to time, I would see patients from that center lined up outside, mostly in their motorized wheelchairs, waiting to be assisted upon by their caretakers or be helped unto a transport truck.
For some reason, thoughts and questions would run through my head each time I would see these patients –
What if I were them? What made me so special that I was born normal – even though my mother had a complicated pregnancy with me, I came out relatively normal? But what about these patients afflicted with cerebral palsy? Was God directly involved in contributing to their physical and mental conditions? Or was it by pure, random chance, with no discernible reason whatsoever that they were in the condition that they were in? Didn’t God have the power to divert the cosmic ray from hitting the ovum and mutating the chromosome perhaps? Did he do that for me? Why me then and why them?
Or perhaps there’s just no reason or purpose whatsoever in all this.
It was by pure random, blind chance that I was born this way and not another.
And you can run a billion what-if scenarios in your head and ruminate what your life would’ve been like if you made this decision or that, etc.
Did we even have a choice to begin with?
Project Augustine 